Mongolian-Language Versions of The Sutra of the Eight Luminous (Mong. Найман гэгээн, Kalm. Нәәмн гегән): a History of Studies and Copies in Russian Repositories

Introduction. A significant part of the written heritage of Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism is formed by translated literature included in compilations of the Tibetan Buddhist canon — Kangyur (Kanjur) and Tengyur (Tanjur) — and compendiums of ritual texts, and, moreover, distributed as independent texts. One of such texts widely represented in the Mongolian literary tradition is The Sutra of the Eight Luminous (Mong. Naiman gegeen, Kalm. Nӓӓmn gegӓn). The Chinese original text of the sutra is called The Sutra of the Eight Luminous (lit. ‘solar’) (Ones) Preached by the Buddha, or Bayang Jing (Chin. fó shuō tiāndì bā yáng shén zhòu jīng, abbreviated — Bāyáng Jīng). The sutra belongs to the subgenre of dharani-sutras which had been primarily connected with ritual in Vajrayana Buddhism since the texts are said to bestow various benefits and eliminate obstacles. Usually, in the Tibetan tradition dharani-sutras are viewed as ‘the word of Buddha’. However, at early stages of the formation of the Tibetan Buddhist canon its compilers obviously followed the Chinese tradition which considers this sutra to be apocryphal since the text includes certain elements of Taoism and traditional Chinese beliefs. Despite the fact the sutra was absent in the ‘Ldankarma’ catalogue and the early handwritten Kangyur editions of the Thempangma branch, it was later included in the xylographic editions, as well as various collections of canonical texts. In the literary tradition of Mongolic peoples the authenticity of the sutra was never questioned. This is evidenced by the numerous handwritten and xylographic samples of the text, the earliest of which date to the Yuan dynasty (14th c. AD). Besides, the sutra is a major Buddhist texts translated by Zaya Pandita Namkhai Jamtso from Tibetan into Oirat using his developed Clear Script. Goals. The article seeks to provide information on the publication and history of studies related to the Tibetan, Uighur, Mongolian and Oirat versions of the sutra, as well as to give a list of the Mongolian, Oirat and Tibetan copies of the sutra contained in Russian repositories. The main methods include the source analysis and searching ones. Conclusions. The text of the sutra translated from the original Chinese text is represented in the Tibetan and Mongolian literary traditions, as well as among the Uyghur translations in the form of two main versions to be correlated to both early and late translations. Besides, the paper concludes there is a later Tibetan version of the sutra which differs from the Chinese original, and it is the former that was actually spread among the Mongolic populations as a ritual text. The analysis of the Mongolian and Oirat manuscript catalogues shows that The Sutra of the Eight Luminous has quite a number of xylographic and handwritten copies in Mongolian, Oirat and Tibetan scripts.

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